Not Thoroughly Thought Through Ideas

Have you ever put your foot in your mouth? Have you ever had someone tell you, “Hey, that’s crazy” “That’ll never work” or “You forgot about…” all in a manner of correcting your “not thoroughly thought through idea.”

We all have “thought out loud”, musing through ideas that are new to us, and we get feedback from others allowing us to modify or correct our ideas. However, newcomers to politics haven’t always learned you can’t do that in public.. Your political opponents will grab onto that half thought through idea and make you look like a fool, a “strange” person, or a crazy idiot. Only those who have been groomed for the game know how to give a politically correct answer all the time, even if the answer in no way fits the question asked.

Otherwise brilliant people often have a long career end in infamy because their declining health, depression or early stages of senility cause them to write things that are quite out of character and “not thoroughly thought through”. They may, at that stage of life, be somewhat isolated, and no one is listening to their ideas and sharing the feedback we all still need. Their political correctness has declined along with age, and they have begun to sound like doddering old fools. In reality, they just need the thinking adjustment that talking among friends produces.

The danger, of course, in our increasingly politicized and politically correct culture, is that everyone will be afraid to say anything new or to think aloud, and everyone will become parrots, stifling the new ideas that a vibrant, lively democracy needs to thrive.